He took up the camera as other people take the pencil and paper. In 1968 he presented his first film Lydia at the Solothurner Filmtage. His appearance as a Filmmaker was absolutely unexpected: the only lyric poet of the film, who succeeded virtually without effort in turning his inner life outwards, creating dreamlike images. With a juvenile absoluteness, innocently arrogant, the pale, gaunt man had put the following sentence in the festival paper: "Look, what kind of a film Reto Andrea Savoldelli has created for you with five thousand Swiss Francs." He pitched himself as "First exponent of the Swiss Immigrant's Cinema". (Martin Schaub)